Many small business have the wrong idea about budget and expenditures. Having a large budget can be an advantage to expanding your business, but that isn’t the only way to get ahead in the game. Here are some branding tactics that any small business can use to grow, regardless of the budget size.

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Define your brand with a promise by explaining what you can offer others that others can’t. You need to set yourself apart from others and you don’t necessarily “need” money in order to do this. Understand what your customers actually need and solve their problems for them through research. Give customers a reason to believe that it’s better to purchase from you instead of your competitors. Once you give them a promise and you keep it, that is the true core of your branding. From how you deal with customer care to the being green to having easy access to your services, there many ways you can approach this without a large budget backing you up.

Choosing the right name can go a long way. Make sure that it is easy to pronounce, spell and remember. Get advice from friends and family to test out the name to see if it’s catchy or relates to your product or the history behind it enough. This process may take some time or it might just come to you, but it must be perfect because that is what your name will always be so be careful. Also, make sure that it isn’t used by another business in order to avoid trademark or copyright disputes. That is the last thing your business wants and it will cost you money to get out that situation.

What’s your story? The history and background of your product or business is what captures an audience. If you have a loving family history behind your business, people can relate to you and understand your product more. If you are an all-natural food company, show the story of your products coming straight from a local farm to show how genuinely natural your products are. People may not be able to definitely remember your name and product, but they will definitely remember how you made them feel with your story. This is important to capture as you will engrave your brand into your audience through this.

Designing your visuals is relative to your brand name and also helps them to remember what your product is. Colors and images are easier to retain than a bunch of words so if you collaborate them, people will remember your product more. From colors to typefaces to styles and layouts, everything about the design can be incorporated in your branding. You want your audience to always think about your business, regardless of what they are looking at. By having consistent and definitive branding, people will be able to look at simple things like a color or typeface and automatically connect it with your business.

Branding isn’t always about paying huge advertisers to have campaigns for you. It is about having a definitive brand that people know of. If you make sure that you have a strong name, story, promise and a consistent design for your brand and product, people will more likely remember you and keep you in mind.